A wireless Access Point (AP) in a Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) of an autonomous architecture is fully deployed and terminated with the WLAN function and managed separately as a separate entity over the network. The autonomous architecture is commonly adopted for a WLAN currently designed in the Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) Authentication and Privacy Infrastructure (WAPI), but a network operation mode of this autonomous architecture has gradually become an obstacle restricting the development of wireless technologies due to its inherent drawbacks along with an increasing scale at which the WLAN is deployed.
Firstly the AP which is an Internet Protocol (IP) addressable device has to be separately managed (including monitored, configured, controlled, etc.) in the WLAN of the autonomous architecture. When the network is deployed at a large scale, a large number of APs may give rise to a tremendous management overhead resulting in a heavy burden upon the network. This phenomenon may be more pronounced especially if configurations of the APs over the network are managed differently from each other, which may discourage the development of wireless technologies.
Secondly it is somewhat difficult to ensure consistent configuration parameters of all the APs in the WLAN of the autonomous architecture because the majority of the configuration parameters for the APs may be parameters to be configured dynamically in addition to static parameters. It may be burdensome and even impossible to make an effort for timely updating of dynamic configurations of the APs throughout the large-scale WLAN.
Thirdly a wireless transmission medium is a shared resource in the WLAN, and in order to improve the performance of the network, the respective APs shall be monitored in real time and the configurations of these APs shall be updated dynamically according to the current usage of the shared medium, but manual configuring of the AP parameters related to the wireless transmission medium may consume a lot of human and material resources.
Fourthly it is also difficult to secure an access to the network and prevent an access of an illegal AP in the WLAN of the autonomous architecture. An AP is typically deployed in such a position that makes it difficult to protect the AP, and once the AP is stolen, security information loaded thereon may be leaked, and the security of the network may be endangered.
In summary, a heavy management burden upon the network may result from monitoring, configuring and controlling of the APs in the WLAN of the autonomous architecture, especially when the WLAN is deployed at a large scale. Furthermore it is also rather difficult to maintain consistent configurations of the APs. Furthermore the shared and dynamic wireless transmission medium requires consistent cooperation of the APs over the network to strive for the maximum network performance and the minimum wireless interference, and this will be more demanding for configuration management of the APs. Security is one of important factors to be considered when the wireless network is designed, and large-scale deployment may also pose a great challenge to the security of the WLAN. As can be apparent, the operation mode over the WLAN of the autonomous architecture has been incapable of accommodating a demand for deploying a large-scale network, and it is highly desired to design a WAPI based convergent WLAN network architecture, i.e., a WAPI thin AP architecture.